Against all expectations? What are the differences between resilient and non-resilient schools in the CIL domain

Abstract

With increasing digitalisation, inequality research focuses on students' digital skills. Findings indicate that there are considerable differences in the acquisition of CIL skills depending on students’ social background. However, there are also resilient schools that achieve above-average CIL skills despite having a high proportion of low-SES students. Looking at different conditions of schools, parental home and students, this article explores why some schools achieve high levels of CIL skills despite less favourable conditions, and why others do not.Taking the example of Germany, the study uses the ICILS 2018 data to analyse (i) which schools can be classified as resilient and which schools can be classified as non-resilient, (ii) in which aspects do these schools differ, (iii) and to what extent school-specific differences in CIL skill levels can be attributed to differing aspects at student, parent and teacher level. Using regression analysis, this article shows that a significant proportion of the skill differences can be attributed to the student level and also to conditions outside the school, in the parental home. However, a significant proportion of the school differences remains unexplained and further research is needed in this area.